


lies / truth

by zhennie



Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, ChikaIta Week 2020, Developing Relationship, M/M, Relationship Negotiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:47:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25789822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zhennie/pseuds/zhennie
Summary: “Don’t say that to me just because you think I want to hear it, Senpai,” Itaru says, his normally calm voice rising, “I don’t care if you lie about everything else, but don’t tell me you love me because you think I want to hear it.”
Relationships: Chigasaki Itaru/Utsuki Chikage
Comments: 1
Kudos: 47
Collections: ChikaIta Week 2020





	lies / truth

**Author's Note:**

> (belated) chikaita week day 4: love languages

‘You’re the worst.’ ‘I hate you.’ ‘Ugly.’ ‘Loser.’ ‘Stupid.’ ‘Die.’ 

Words are meaningless. 

Itaru is, after all, a netizen. He’s seen the worst of what people will say behind the anonymity of a screen, true thoughts plastered pixel by pixel across a screen. He’s seen how ugly comment sections can get, how vicious so-called teammates can be over voice chat, how he, himself, says things that he would never voice out loud under the masked face of taruchi. 

It’s the same offline. How many times has he smiled and said things he doesn’t mean? How many times has he gone through the motions, laying down sentence after sentence like a barrier between him and everyone else, a wall that grows higher and higher with every sound that falls out of his mouth?

He knows firsthand, after all, what it’s like to fall into a betrayal set up by words. Toonoka had dug a chasm between them with his, covering up a pit until it was too late and Itaru tumbled down into it, only realizing afterwards that their conversations and friendship was all sticks and leaves layered over an unbreachable divide. 

Mankai was the first place, maybe where Itaru had begun to reconsider his long-held belief. When people like Sakuya and the Director looked at him with open hearts and pure intentions, he couldn’t help but think, ‘maybe this time, it will be different.’ 

But then again, old habits die hard, and when Utsuki Chikage looks at him and says, “I love you,” all Itaru can think of is the first stone being placed at the base of the wall that will someday separate them completely.

\--

Utsuki Chikage is a liar. 

He’d come into Mankai as a liar, and he would probably someday leave it the same way too. Sometimes, when he felt like he couldn’t give the troupe anything at all, he took a little comfort from that reminder, at least. Mankai Company had never expected anything from him except for what he already was. 

Perhaps, Chigasaki Itaru expected the least out of them all. Maybe it was the time they had spent together at the company before he had joined Mankai, or maybe it was the time they ended up spending together at Mankai, in their shared room, but Chikage had been begun to be aware of Itaru’s quirks long before they had been revealed, and Itaru had sensed exactly what Chikage was capable of long before he’d seen it in action. 

And because of that, there’s no reason to--but Chikage keeps lying anyways. 

‘What are we doing?’ ‘Does this mean something?’ ‘Is this real?’ 

_Whatever you want. If you want it to. Is anything real, really?_

Whatever it was they were doing, Chikage had come into it with both eyes open, knowing that it was most likely temporary. And that, perhaps, was the only reason he needed to keep himself, if even just a little, hidden still. But whatever reason it was, Itaru had accepted it without question, calling him unromantic as he always had, and being unabashedly selfish when it came to the two of them. 

Somewhere along the way, Chikage goes from lying, and watching Itaru roll his eyes, disbelieving, to saying the things he knows Itaru wants to hear. Or, maybe, Chikage wants Itaru to hear these things before he even realizes he does. He finds himself spoiling Itaru--waking him up in the morning for work when he know he’s just stayed up all night for some game, agreeing to play his games with him, bringing him snacks when he comes back to their room after his taruchi stream has ended. He realizes, somewhere along the way, he had stopped lying to Itaru, and started lying to himself instead.

And Chikage has always spent a lot of time lying, but he’s telling the truth when he looks down at Itaru in their room one evening, head lying in his lap and phone raised up into his view, fingers moving furiously in a rhythm game, and says, “I love you.” 

Itaru startles at that, and the phone drops out of his hands, falling onto his collarbone with a soft smack. 

“What?” Itaru says, his eyes sliding up to Chikage’s face, fingers still tangled in his fluffy, messy hair. 

“I love you,” Chikage says again, “you don’t--”

“Don’t say that to me,” Itaru interrupts, pushing away from Chikage’s hands and pushing himself out of his lap. It’s not the reaction Chikage is expecting, and his hand, the one which had been petting through Itaru’s hair, twitches, as if in protest for losing its task. 

“Don’t say that to me just because you think I want to hear it, Senpai,” Itaru continues, his normally calm voice rising, “I don’t care if you lie about everything else, but don’t tell me you love me because you think I want to hear it.” 

“I’m not,” Chikage says, flustered despite himself. It’s a pathetic defense, but he finds he can’t deflect as usual. The look Itaru gives him is scathing, full of more heat than he usually allows for real life. 

“Aren’t you?” Itaru spits out the words like bullets, each one as steady real bullets in a gun Chikage had once aimed and fired a long time ago in a place far away. Chikage doesn’t have a reply to that, and Itaru stands up then, his phone clattering to the floor, forgotten--he must really be upset, Chikage thinks, in a strange disassociation of the moment, to not care about his phone--and slams the door behind him as he leaves.

\--

Itaru loves Mankai because it is a place that accepts him as he is. But in this moment, he also hates it for that reason. He thinks, a little hysterically, that he had set himself up for his own downfall. Hadn’t he learned anything from Toonoka? If he bared his heart long enough, someone was eventually going to notice it and everything that made it tick, and someday, someone was going to start tossing pebbles in there until his heart couldn’t take it anymore, and send him, all of him, to a stuttering halt. 

He protects himself by fishing the pebbles out, by clearing them out before they can start to affect him, lining them up side by side, row on top of row, as if to say, _see, these are the reasons this will fall apart some day_ , until he is looking at that wall, and not the person on the other side of it.

Chikage did not throw pebbles. He threw meaningless things at Itaru’s bared heart, which Itaru had always thought was kind. Knowing who Chikage was meant that his words wouldn’t lodge in his heart until they broke him down. It meant that he would never get stuck trying to decipher something he had said, because there was nothing to decipher in the first place. This was how they had always worked, and if Itaru had pushed--’Is this real? Does this mean something? What are we doing’--it wasn’t because he needed an answer. It was because he needed the reassurance of the nonanswer.

Itaru takes a deep breath, and then exhales. The dorms are quiet, for once, and Itaru is eternally grateful that there’s no one around to see him. He’s not sure if he could stand facing anyone without a mask on, right now. 

What does Chigasaki Itaru want? He wants the new Lancelot SSR. He wants to play as many games as he can in the time that he has. He wants to take a vacation. He wants Chikage to kiss him again. He doesn’t want to know the truth.

Words are meaningless, and Itaru hates them. 

“I won’t say it again, but it was the truth,” Chikage says from where he is still sitting on the couch, the moment Itaru walks back into through the door, recomposed. Chikage, too, seems to have pulled himself together, no longer tongue-tied.

Itaru is tired, so tired. Reality is hard and games are easy. Reality is hard, and he wishes he could fast forward through this scene. They’re not going to break up, Itaru thinks, because you would have to have a label in order to actually break up. 

“But, that’s not what you want, is it?” Chikage asks. He stands, takes a step forward towards Itaru. Itaru doesn’t say anything back, just looks at Chikage, with his quick hands and his composed appearance, neat hair and unassuming glasses. 

“I miscalculated. I won’t say it,” Chikage continues, “and you don’t have to say anything back.” 

“Would it even matter to you if I did say it back?” Itaru asks. 

“Are you going to believe the answer I give you?” Chikage replies. Itaru makes a neutral noise, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with Chikage’s counterquestion. Chikage continues forward, until he’s standing in front of Itaru, and reaches out, his hand coming out past him to shut the still open door. Between the closed door and Chikage, Itaru tenses, and then exhales. Somewhere, deep inside him, a pebble drops deeper into the corners of his heart, settling down in a tiny, unreachable place. Itaru reaches back, and leans his body against Chikage’s, his hands curling into the fabric at the back of his shirt. Chikage’s arms, in return, rest easily around Itaru, one at his waist, one cupping the back of his neck. 

“I’m tired,” Itaru mumbles instead. 

“Are you going to call out of work tomorrow?” Chikage asks.

“...yeah,” Itaru decides, closing his eyes for a moment, “will you cover for me?” 

“If I must,” Chikage says, and gently leads them back to the couch, arranging Itaru so that his head is in his lap again, and handing him his phone back. In the quiet of their room, the Knights of Round theme song sings out from the tiny speakers of Itaru’s phone, and Chikage leans back against the couch, listening to the familiar tune and the familiar phrases. 

And as Itaru scrolls through the notifications he’s missed, Chikage goes back to running his fingers through his hair.

**Author's Note:**

> this started going one direction and ended somewhere else completely. i was thinking about what chikage and itaru's love languages, but only came to the conclusion that whatever it was, words were not it. but what if they thought it was? 
> 
> anyways, this was supposed to be fluff but it did not end up fluff. 
> 
> thank you to lily and kuro for betaing.


End file.
